


Five Different Ways to Say I Love You

by jeeno2



Series: One Hundred Ways to Say I Love You [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Jon Snow is a Targaryen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-01 17:09:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11490876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: Sansa is a dutiful daughter and will do as her family has commanded her. But her mother never once made mention of this strange, excitable feeling that has taken root in the pit of her stomach, which she knows has nothing to do with duty.





	1. Can I Kiss You?

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a short five-part story, combining five different J x S ficlet prompts I've gotten on tumblr from a "One Hundred Ways to Say I Love You" prompt list into a single, arranged marriage AU.

**i.**

 

“Can I kiss you?”

The young prince's words, spoken just above a whisper, cut through the fog of nerves that have plagued Sansa all morning and bring her, with dizzying clarity, into the present.

“Kiss me?” she repeats, so stunned by the request she’s not certain she heard him properly. She’s staring wide-eyed at him now, she knows, which makes the situation even more awkward than it had already been. 

All the same, she cannot seem to look away.

Sansa’s lady mother sat with her in her chambers a fortnight ago, before any of the Targaryen contingent from Kings Landing had arrived, and prepared her for just about every eventuality that might occur tonight, after she marries this man who is little more than a stranger to her. 

Sansa is a dutiful daughter and will do as her family has commanded her. But her mother never once made mention of this strange, excitable feeling that has now taken root in the pit of her stomach, which she knows has nothing to do with duty.

When several long moments pass without Sansa saying anything else the man who will be her husband in two hours averts his eyes, a light flush beginning to color his cheeks. 

“I just thought… if we are to be married…” Jon begins by way of explanation, before trailing off, shrugging.

As the servants bustle around them, preparing Winterfell’s Great Hall for the great feast that will occur after their wedding ceremony, Sansa takes another long moment to study her betrothed.

She takes in the span of his shoulders, his slender hips, and the strong and earnest set of his jaw. She regards his kind, brown eyes – the first feature of his she noticed, from across Kings Landing's crowded tourney grounds, back when her lord father informed her she and this young Targaryen prince would soon be wed.

 _This is a good man_ , she decides, as she considers him now. _He_ _has a kind face._

Without another word, Sansa takes Jon’s chin in her hand and turns his face so he has to look at her.

She sends up a brief prayer for courage to the Seven, closes her eyes, and presses her lips to his.

Jon stiffens, clearly surprised by her actions. But he recovers quickly enough. A moment later his arms go round her body, and he holds her close as he gently, tentatively, kisses her back.

It doesn’t last long. Sansa soon pulls back, her heart now galloping in her chest as though she'd run a mile.  Jon’s brown eyes are soft, unfocused, and unreadable as they return her gaze.

At length, he clears his throat and rubs at the back of his neck. His cheeks are even pinker now than they were before she kissed him, and Sansa has to bite down a mad urge to giggle when she notices it.

“Come, Lady Sansa,” he says. His voice is a bit strange, a little rougher, than it had been before she’d kissed him. He extends his hand towards her in wordless invitation. “They’ll be waiting for us inside.”

She nods, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “You’re right."

Sansa takes his hand. It’s very warm and surprisingly strong, his fingers fitting neatly between hers like interlocking pieces of a child's puzzle.

She hopes her own hand does not shake too badly.

“Shall we?” she asks.

Together, they walk into Winterfell’s Great Hall to face what comes next.

 


	2. Try some.

**ii.**

 

With a sideways glance in Sansa’s direction, Jon slides a goblet of summerwine across the table towards her.

“Try some,” he says, inclining his head toward the drink. “It’ll make the next two hours pass more pleasantly.” He gives her a smile so shy, so earnest, it makes Sansa’s heart ache.

Too soon, however, Jon sobers, his face reverting to the expressionless mask he must wear in public as a Targaryen prince and heir to the Iron Throne.  With a nearly imperceptible shake of his head he looks away from Sansa and turns his attention once more to their guests.

Sansa cannot help the frown that tugs at the corners of her lips at his sudden change in demeanor.

She has done her level best to avoid thinking about, or even looking directly at, most of the people gathered in Winterfell’s Great Hall this evening to celebrate the joining of their Houses. Too many of these people publicly claim fealty to House Stark but would, Sansa has no doubt, betray the North in a heartbeat if they thought it might curry favor with the queen.  

Sansa does not want to sully the happiness she feels in this moment with the doubts she knows will plague her the rest of her life as Jon’s wife.  After all, today is a happy day. She has honored her family, her House, and the North. And she believes her new husband is a very good man.

“We need to say hello to my aunt, Sansa,” Jon says quietly, cutting into Sansa’s darkening thoughts.

His tone is almost apologetic, and her frown deepens. 

In spite of her better judgment Sansa turns her head so her eyes follow Jon’s. She sees the queen, sitting less than ten feet from their table at the front of the Great Hall, looking haughty and resplendent in an elegant gown that perfectly matches the ethereal, silvery tint of her hair.

Sansa knows that once, long ago, the queen – Danaerys the Unburnt, they’d called her; the Mother of Dragons – had saved the Realm from destruction with nothing but a shake of her head and the fiery wingbeats of her three children. To be sure, since taking the Iron Throne from the Lannisters she has ruled the Seven Kingdoms fairly, and with a delicate hand, just as Tyrion the Halfman had sworn she would.

Still; there is something deeply unsettling about the way Queen Danaerys takes in the people around her. Sansa cannot shake the feeling that every time the queen glances in her direction tonight her strange, violet eyes see right through her.

As though able to read Sansa’s unspoken thoughts, Jon leans over and whispers, very quietly, into her ear: “You can’t put it off forever. Neither can I.” Jon’s words are warm little puffs of air against the sensitive skin of her throat – and despite the soberness of the words themselves the feel of his breath against her skin causes an involuntary shiver to run down the length of Sansa’s spine.

She pulls back and looks at him. His eyes are soft, and kind, but serious. “Try some summerwine,” he says again, nudging the goblet a little closer. 

She swallows thickly. “I’ve never drunk any before,” she admits quietly. Her lady mother had always forbidden it, and though Arya had snuck sips now and again behind their Septa’s back Sansa’d never dared.

He nods, understanding. “Just try one sip,” he says. “It’s good. And… well. It should make talking with my aunt a little easier.” His eyes twinkle mischievously, and the genuine smile he gives her pulls a matching one from her before she’s realized it’s happened.

She sighs. “Fine,” she says. She grabs the goblet, closes her eyes, and swallows down a huge mouthful before she can talk herself out of doing it. It tastes like fire and like summer all at once, and it both burns and soothes as it goes down.  

Sansa coughs a little before placing the goblet back down on the table.

“Well done,” Jon says, sounding genuinely impressed. “Think you can face the room, now?”

Sansa opens her eyes. He’s still smiling at her. She wonders, for one fleeting moment, if perhaps this is a man she can learn to love. “Only if you come with me.”

He laughs a little at her words, and then slowly reaches across the table and takes her hand in his. “Of course,” he says warmly, running his thumb gently along the back of her hand. “I’ll be right by your side the whole time.”

He is true to his word.


	3. You Can Have Half

**iii.**

 

Sansa blinks, stunned, at the wide featherbed Winterfell’s servants set up this morning especially for them. It’s easily three times again as wide as the next-largest bed Sansa has ever slept in, the tick more than twice as thick as the one that has been hers since childhood.

She steals a glance at Jon out of the corner of her eye to gauge his reaction to their temporary accommodations. 

Not that a bed like this would be anything out of the ordinary for the heir to the Iron Throne, of course.

Either way, all Jon appears to have eyes for at the moment are his shoes. He’s staring at them intently, like they alone hold all the secrets to the universe, and his hands are clasped so tightly behind his back his knuckles are going white. 

Sansa closes her eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath.

Not exactly an auspicious beginning to their wedding night, she muses.

Seeing no point in postponing the inevitable, Sansa walks to their bed on quiet feet and sits down with a sigh. Until this moment she had not realized just how _tired_ she is, her feet stiff and sore inside the pinched, tightly-laced shoes her Septa insisted are all the rage in the south. She has been so nervous today – so full of nerves and pent-up energy – that she’s scarcely remembered to breathe all day, let alone reflect on how utterly exhausted she is.  

But now, finally away from the prying eyes that have been on her since dawn and alone with her new husband, Sansa lies back on the extravagant bed and stretches her weary limbs. An involuntary sigh slips out of her as she relaxes into the soft mattress.

“You can have half.”

They’re the first words Jon’s spoken in nearly half an hour, and he says them so quietly that at first Sansa’s not certain she’s heard him properly. 

She props herself up on her elbows and looks at him. He stands by the door to their chambers as though rooted to the spot, his face slowly going the color of an underripe tomato.

“I can have half of what?” She raises a quizzical eyebrow at him.

Jon swallows audibly and chances a glance at her. Their eyes meet, Jon’s face reddens further, and then he looks away again, this time at an invisible spot of nothing just beyond her right shoulder. 

He coughs into his hand. “You can have half of the bed,” he clarifies.

At that, Sansa sits up. “What are you talking about?” she asks, truly puzzled now. “Half of the bed? Do you mean to say we will not… um… that you do not wish to…” 

Her lady mother never prepared her for the possibility that her new husband might not want to touch her tonight. Her stomach twists uncomfortably at the very idea.

Jon shakes his head vigorously, cutting her off. He looks utterly miserable. “It’s not that. It’s not that I don’t want to, Sansa.  I just… I did not want to  _presume_  – I mean, not tonight, anyway.  And…”

 _Oh_ , _seven hells_ , Sansa thinks to herself with some surprise as Jon continues his nervous babble. She is glad, and not for the first time, that her Septa is not privy to the coarse language that sometimes goes through her head when she is frustrated by a situation.

“Jon,” she says, loudly and firmly enough that it shuts him up. She stands up from the bed and approaches him slowly, the way she once saw Arya approach a wounded and frightened animal out in the godswood. 

She takes Jon’s face in both of her hands and presses a gentle kiss to his lips. Her new husband is trembling beneath her palms, but to Sansa’s relief he does not pull away from the kiss until she does.

“I will  _never_  force you to do anything you don’t want to do,” he says, so earnestly it breaks her heart.

Sansa steels her nerves, and, her mind made up, she nods, as much for her own benefit as for Jon’s.

Wordlessly, Sansa takes Jon’s hands and places them over her breasts before covering them with her own hands. His fingers twitch a little, reflexively, against the fullness of her curves, and his breath catches in his throat.

Emboldened by his reaction to her body, and with her heart pounding in her ears, Sansa kisses him again. Harder, this time.

“You won’t be forcing me,” she murmurs earnestly against his lips. The thrum of anticipation that courses through her when he leans forward at last and kisses her back makes her feel drunk, and wild, and burning hot.  And she likes it. “I promise.”


	4. I just want you to be happy.

Jon must leave her in the morning.  

It is plain to Sansa that he does not wish to go. That what he  _really_  wants is to stay, here in Winterfell, with her.

Though he has said little about it, Sansa can see Jon’s feelings on the matter plainly enough in the set of his shoulders and in the way he clenches his jaw tightly whenever he thinks she does not see.

But before Jon is anything else – her husband; her lover, now; her dearest friend – Jon is heir to the Iron Throne.  And the queen requires his presence in Kings Landing as soon as possible, according to her raven from two nights ago.

As queen of what remains of the Seven Kingdoms her will, of course, supersedes all. And so even though Jon has not left Sansa’s side for more than a handful of hours since the morning of their wedding ceremony a fortnight ago, tomorrow at dawn her father will load him up with furs and dried food and all the men he can spare to escort him on the long journey south.

Sansa, as the oldest living child to the Warden of the North, will not be able to join her husband in their new home in Kings Landing until the northern harvests are all gathered and properly accounted for. Which means that by the time they are finally reunited, she and Jon will have been apart from each other for nearly the full length of their marriage.

“I just want you to be happy, Sansa,” Jon tells her tonight after the sweat from their shared passion has cooled on their skin. He traces her full lips with the pad of his thumb, examining her face for any sign of the tears that have threatened to fall since he first shared with her the queen’s instructions for him. “It’s all I want in the world.”

“Then don’t go.” Sansa’s eyes are fierce as she holds his gaze, her tone brooking no opposition.

Jon meets her eyes with an expression that belies his sadness, but in it is also a determination that is more than a match for her own.

“I have to go,” he tells her flatly, unyielding.

Without saying anything further Jon rolls her gently onto her back and begins to slowly, tenderly kiss down the length of her body. He begins at her breasts, nuzzling the sweet valley between them before kissing the two rosy-crested peaks.

“Jon…”

He rests his head, briefly, on her stomach. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her soft skin. “I wish I could stay,” he whispers to her navel before kissing it and continuing his journey south.

She wishes he could stay, too. She has wanted to scream and shout with the unfairness of his leaving until it’s been all she could do these past few days to bite her tongue. But now, here in their bed, Sansa finds it difficult to hold on to her anguish, and to her anger with the queen for taking her new husband from her so soon after their wedding night, the more he touches her.

When his mouth at last reaches her sex, he lifts his head and looks up at her with an expression full of such adulation and longing it takes her breath away, even as the feel of his breath on her sensitive flesh turns her blood to fire in her veins.

“Something for you to remember me by until we are reunited,” he murmurs, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips, before he presses his mouth to her and all conversation ends.

 _This will sustain me_ , she thinks, her eyes closing of their own accord as the pleasure, once again, begins to build. 

She winds her fingers into Jon’s hair and tugs, pulling him closer. 

 _It will_ have _to sustain me._

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to come say hello on tumblr I'm there as jeeno2.


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